


universal stasis

by WritingOnTheWalls



Category: King Falls AM (Podcast)
Genre: Bring!Back!Jack!2k19!, F/M, I Tried, I love Sammy Stevens and I am sorry, JACK HOPES, M/M, One Shot, Some fluff maybe, There are other pairings but hm, Trusting my heart stats on this one, What's a dialogue?, a lil angsty, i guess, in this fic and in my heart, lgbt+ stuff but idk, most stuff i think is canon-typical, some abuse hello, some ~sex~ talk wow, the main one is jammy bc they're the important one, there's some alcohol and suicide mentions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-24
Updated: 2019-07-24
Packaged: 2020-07-12 12:14:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19945993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WritingOnTheWalls/pseuds/WritingOnTheWalls
Summary: there are an infinite number of universes and in some of them, sammy is happy.





	universal stasis

In a different world, Sammy wakes up to the sound of his boyfriend singing in the kitchen whilst he makes them both breakfast on a lazy Sunday afternoon.   
They’ve managed to sneak a few hours of sleep in, and though the sun has been up for hours, they will eat eggs and toast and cereal (and if the protests aren’t too great, maybe even some unsweetened iced tea and golden raisins) and drink way too much coffee and laugh and revel in the feeling of contented quiet, and the knowledge that things are somehow impossibly perfect. 

Their bed is warm, and they hold hands in the streets, and flirt on their radio show, and nothing else matters except the belief that they’ve found _ home. _

The thing is, that in that world, his boyfriend’s name is Ben Arnold. 

He’s a man of average height, medium rage, and infinite love. For Sammy, for his mom and his friends, for the world. 

(Sometimes they even sing love songs at each other on air, because why not? It’s two am and nobody cares and if they did. Well. They could make their own damn radio show.) 

In this universe, their first kiss was during a snowstorm, Sammy’s first Christmas in town. They’d been a little tipsy, and a little breathless, and a little too in love to care about the  _ after _ . 

Ben’s cheeks had been flushed with cold and joy, and Sammy had laughed and laughed and laughed. 

In this universe, Sammy is always laughing, but especially at Ben. 

The  _ after _ is even better.

* * *

In a different universe, much is the same, but Sammy is decidedly not gay. 

Lily Wright is just as straight, and since they like proving people’s assumptions wrong, they fall desperately in love during their first year of college.

Opposites attract? Not in their case. 

Their first date involves bowling, and Sammy probably should’ve bothered requesting shoes in his actual size, because when he nearly trips over his own (big, dumb) feet three rounds in a row, Lily spends the rest of the night tripping him over. 

_ Accidentally. _ She tells him each time. 

_ Accidentally _ , he tells her as he places a dozen kisses on her lips (which are just as soft and wonderful as he’d always imagined them to be.) 

She takes him home on their summer break, and he meets her family which is less awkward than it should be. Her mom is a little overbearing, he supposes. Her dad a little on-edge. He even meets her younger brother Jack a few times, but he always seems too preoccupied with his own thoughts to really pay attention to his sister’s new fling. 

(When they get married, Sammy asks him to be his best man, partially because he wants to, but partially because he has nobody else. The strained look on Jack’s face as he graciously accepts is unusual, but nothing worth over-thinking about.) 

* * *

In a different universe, Sammy still finds his way to King Falls. 

He’d dated a guy called Jack for a while, but had eventually given up on attempting to call him back. If he weren’t an old man at thirty, he might’ve used the word  _ ghosted.  _ But this is Sammy Stevens, after all.

Otherwise his love life has been nothing to write home about, and he’s mostly okay with that. 

Until meets Ben Arnold through his job, and Emily Potter through him, who are absolutely perfect in every conceivable way. He’s a little envious of their relationship, but they never leave him feeling left out. Still, he wants.

When Ben corners him after work one day, and shyly asks him if he’d like to join him and Emily on a date - a  _ date  _ date - Sammy feels like his life literally couldn’t be any better. 

Ben rants often about  _ Garbage Bears  _ whilst Sammy and Emily hold hands and roll their eyes with hearts full of affection for this tiny, tiny man (and each other) and it’s obvious to all three of them that there’s no other way to do this.

* * *

In a different universe, Sammy goes on an awkward tinder date with a boy who is much more attractive than his bio makes him out to be, which doesn’t matter much anyway because he’s interesting and witty and so, so smart and Sammy isn’t  **that** shallow.

His name is Jack, and his smile is laced with anxiety, and he’s a pretty decent kisser (which is always a bonus, shallow or not.) 

They dance in the rain, and it feels so exhilarating, so freeing. Sammy stops seeing things like rain and hail and snow as abominations, and starts calling up Jack instead and rainy days become dancing days and it’s so fucking pure and blissful and perfect.

Because even on the worst days, Jack is like sunshine and Sammy could definitely use some more sunshine in his life. 

But of course, Jack moves away with an apology and a wistful look in his eye, and Sammy is so terribly distraught that he never gets around to reinstalling tinder. 

(And rainy days are once again just rainy days.) 

* * *

There’s a universe where Jack is a pirate, and Sammy is his kidnapped princess, who suffers a terrible case of stockholm syndrome (but can’t bring himself to care about why it’s wrong.) 

* * *

There’s a universe where Sammy starts at King Falls AM with a producer who’s name is Dwayne, and they play a lot of music because sometimes Sammy gets tired of hearing himself talk about nothing on the radio for hours and hours and hours. 

Dwayne’s nice enough, but he has a pretty one-track mind. His topics of conversation range from farming, producing, and some kid he went to school with who’s now a big time musical sensation. 

They play some of his music sometimes, and Sammy thinks his voice is alright. Nothing special. But alright. 

Sammy never does tell Dwayne why he came to King Falls, and Dwayne never asks. 

* * *

There’s a universe where Sammy is in The Void by himself, whilst Jack tries desperately to bring him back. 

He succeeds. 

  
There’s another where Sammy had left with Jack and they’d both ended up stuck in The Void together. 

That universe is somehow the worse option.

* * *

There’s a universe where Sammy hates sex - rough or vanilla or otherwise. He likes guys and gals and non-binary pals, but only touches them for their happiness, would rather not. 

He has sex with a lot of people anyway. Because he wants them to love him, and doesn’t know how to make them do so otherwise. He hates himself for it. 

(This is one of an infinite number of universes where Sammy looks in the mirror, and hates the person he sees staring back at him. In none of them is it any easier.) 

* * *

There’s a universe where Saturdays are Sammy’s favourite day of the week, because Saturdays are football days, and Sammy feels weightless in his too-big uniform, on a too-big field, kicking around a ball and tackling and cheering and crying and throwing victory parties when they actually manage to win. 

* * *

There’s a universe where Ben Arnold is addicted to kale and kombucha and breakfast cereals soaked in iced tea and that’s a universe a little too weird to think too long about.

* * *

There’s a number of universes where Sammy turns to alcohol instead of his friends, because he’s never had to watch Lily try to drown her lack of self-worth in a bottle of discount-store off-brand vodka. Never had to drive her to therapy because she’d been too intoxicated more than a full two days later to drive herself. Never had to hold her whilst she threw up all over his shiny shoes and sobbed into his favourite jacket every other weekend. 

In these universes, he thinks he’s happy.    


In some of them, he becomes a statistic. The ones he manages not to are worse. 

* * *

There are universes where Sammy changes his name to Samantha and nobody even bats an eyelid.   
There are way more where he wants to, but is far too afraid to be that person.

* * *

There are universes where he’s grown up with Ben and Pete and Doyle and a billion different combinations of towns people, sometimes in King Falls, sometimes a million miles away in places that maybe don't exist (like Canada, or Australia.)

In some universes, Sammy and Ben live on Mars and fight crime, and in others Jack and Ben go on a couple of weird dates before realising they maybe aren’t meant to be together after all, no matter how well their mutual friends think they’d get along.

In a handful of universes, Sammy and Jack spend every summer together at camp, and kiss awkwardly by the lake whilst everybody else pretends not to notice how badly they need each other. 

There are so many universes where Sammy’s dad hits him. For being gay. Or for being stupid. Or because he doesn’t want to play football or clean his room. Or because he’ll never be good enough. Or just because he can. Over and over and over until he bleeds or his nose shatters or his heart breaks. In some of them he dies, and in most of them he wants to hit him back. In some of them, he does. Mostly, he’s just numb.

In some universes, he’s never learned how to love, doesn’t want to. Doesn’t need to. Those universes are lonely, but he doesn’t have the words (or the heart) to care. 

In some universes, Jack is obsessed with My Little Pony instead of the paranormal, and sometimes Sammy is an artist. In one universe, Jack walks into his therapy clinic and Sammy considers quitting on the spot so he doesn’t have to break any fraternisation codes and find himself fired. 

In some universes, Jack is small, and in some he is tall. He mostly still manages to fill up every room he’s in, because  _ that smile.  _

In most of the universes where Sammy meets Jack, he considers the possibility of  _ what if.  _ Sometimes subconsciously, sometimes so often it’s clearly written on his face. 

In an occasional universe, they are both fish or plants or stars, and in one universe Sammy is a raccoon that Ben rescues from an accident and nicknames Patchy. 

In one universe, Jack passes Sammy in the street, and their eyes connect momentarily, and both feel a fleeting familiarity but push it to the furthermost corners of their minds because they both have jobs and kids and lives and if they spend the rest of their lives fixated on a second-long glance, then that’s just something they’ll have to deal with. 

* * *

Jack collects rocks in way too many universes. 

Sammy doesn’t stop him from doing so in anywhere near enough of them. 

* * *

There’s one universe where he falls in love with Jack, and it’s easy and wonderful and they live happily ever after.

* * *

In this universe, Sammy has heard about multiverses, because he might be a little technologically inept, but he does do the pop culture thing right sometimes. 

  
He doesn’t believe it, of course. It doesn’t change the fact that they’re very, very real. 

There are an unthinkable combination of potential Sammy’s and Jack’s and Ben’s and garbage bears, in an unthinkable number of universes doing an unthinkable number of different things in an unthinkable number of lives.

An infinite number of Sammy’s broken in an infinite number of ways. (Almost always broken. So, so, so broken.) 

  
This universe is no different.    
This universe he has a best friend, and an almost-sister in law, and a librarian who understands him, and a sheriff who would give up his badge (and life) for him.    
  
He has a favourite diner where he likes to eat pancake puppies with those people, his friends - his family, and where he lets himself laugh even when it makes him ache to do so. 

He has fights with mayors and frog-loving freaks, and he follows his heart stats (because Ben insists.) 

He was thrust out of the closet in the worst possible way and Frickard is still a dick and had absolutely no fucking right, but maybe he’ll eventually be alright with it, because now at least he doesn’t have to pretend. Not about this.

He looks in the mirror, and hates himself a little less every day. 

In this universe, he told Jack Wright ‘no’ one too many times, and he wishes more than anything that he’d told him ‘yes’ instead. 

In this universe, he’s heard a saying about grass being greener, and maybe that’s true. But this is his life. His universe. He can’t change it no matter how badly he wants or wishes or pretends. 

He’ll look in the mirror, and be Sammy Stevens.    
Radio host, friend, brother, fiance. 

He’ll learn to be okay with that, because it’s enough. He’s enough.

He wakes up every day in his and Ben (and Lily’s) apartment, and listens to them bicker in the kitchen, and smiles a secret little smile, because this is home. 

Jack will always be his summer home, but he can have other homes, too. That’s allowed. He’ll make it allowed. 

In this universe, he’d felt like dying had been his only option, and in this universe, he’d slowly started to feel whole again. In this universe, he would love more than anything to have his Jack back, but thinks he’ll be okay if that never happens.   
  
In this universe, he’s lost everything, but has gained something else in return. Maybe something a little more important. 

In this universe, he has Jack Hopes, because it’s hard not to. 

(And in this universe, eventually, Ben and Lily’s plan will work, and Jack will stumble out of The Void and into Sammy’s arms, and the feeling of relief and pure, unadulterated love for the stupid, handsome man in front of him will erase every thought of every other universe, and they’ll cling to each other and cry and it’ll be fucking perfect, because that’s the only universe this Sammy Stevens wants to be in.)   
  


**Author's Note:**

> had a thought at 5am, which spawned into this lil fic.  
> it's now 9am and i haven't slept in 27 hours, but also this exists now, and uh.  
> it's fine guys! i'm fine!  
> (sorry for likely poor editing i'm just....hmm tired)  
> love y'all.


End file.
